How to browse a JavaScript-ridden Website

Have you ever gone to a website to read an article and find yourself playing mouse pilot trying to avoid those pesky text-link ads, pop-ups, scrolling and flashing banners and other annoyances? Some websites are just horribly notorious for this kind of behavior. Some even hold you hostage for half a minute with ad pages the won’t go away unless you “click here to skip this ad”. I admit that the publishers of these websites have every right to generate revenue – that is how they are able to offer us free content, but come on!

The culprit here is JavaScript and some folks just go to town with the damn thing whenever the opportunity comes up. I reached my limit the other day when every mouse move I made on a particular website brought up pop-up ads and stupid surveys, pulled up external web links and plain made the browsing experience very frustrating.

I tried disabling JavaScript on Internet Explorer, but the process was too cumbersome: Tools|Internet Options|Security Tab|Custom Level|Scroll to/Find the “Scripting” Section|Look for “Scripting of Java Applets|Disable/Enable|Restart Browser. What a bummer. I tried Firefox which was a little better: Tools|Options|Content|Enable/Disable JavaScript. This step works for the Flock browser as well.

The solution was the Opera browser. Three steps – Tools|Quick Preferences|Disable/Enable Javascript. So now, whenever I run across those annoying websites, it is a simple thing to disable JavaScript so I can read articles and comments without aggravation. When a section comes up that requires JavaScript, I simply turn it back on. This has done so well in reducing my stress level that Opera is now my default browser. Whenever a “Internet Explorer Only” site comes up, I use IE.

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